FRENCH STRIKES

Grey River Argus, 16 June 1936, Page 5

FRENCH STRIKES

THE SOVIET IDEA Communist Demonstration (Aust. & N.Z. Cable Assn.) LONDON, June 15. Tile “ Miiiiche-Hvr Guardian’s” Paris eorrespciident says; While racegoers, represent ng half of Parts, went -o Chantilly to see the French Derby, the other half spent the afternoon at a victory festival organised by the Communist Partv at the Velyodronie Buffalo, a vast open air s.adium in the. working class suburb of Alont Rouge. Eveiy thing was well organised. Flags and banners were on a

colossal seam. A hundred tin* usitml crowded the grandstands. A hundred thousand Mood in the sunny arena, which was bisected by a ra.sed gangway leading to the speakers’ forum, Tricolours alternated with Red Flags. Banners inscribed “Free Strong Happy France” floated al each end of the stadium.

Everyone wore red emblems. A huge picture of the late Henri Barbousse adorned the speakers’ p’atform. A band played ri-volut’.oi.ary tur.es, while squads of the victorious strikers, bearing banner; displaying a hammer and sickle, paraded the gangwav, as the crowds cheered the &ovie.L Suddenly four great flags were broken from the flagpoles in the middle of the arena. These were examples of the newly-devised national Ung of Soviet France, namely, a Red Iblagf. quartered with thq Tricolour and the Communist hammer and sickle, between golden letters. Here was a strange vision of the new France in the making. The names of twenty-two victims of Fascism, killed in street fights in the past two years, :*,ver e read' out at ,a drum-tapped Requi'em. a. band finally playing the Russian Funeral Alarch. The. speakers delivered addresses triumphantly, recording the re-ult of the strikes, prophesvir.g a more prosperous future for the worker:-. WORKSHOPS EVACUATED. LONDON, .lun..' 14. The “D-.ily Mail's” Paris correspondent says: Alarkmg the termination of the majority of strikes, hundreds of thousands of employees, who are resuming to-morrow, marched in orderly files from the workshops. Bodies of men afterwards returtied to many factories and spent hours in removing revolutionary minal draw.ngs and notices.

BELGIAN MINERS

General Strike Proposed (Aust. & N.Z. Cable Assn.) BRUSSELS, June 14. After a fruitless conference at which tho coal-owners rejected the miners’ demand for ten per cent, increase in the pay, the miners announced that a general strike would begin. At Antwerp, tho tug hands joined the striking dockers, and refused to assist cargo-vessels to leave the port.